The next time you're looking to hire a new employee, you may get better results by posting a list of actual weekly activities the new hire would be doing, as opposed to simply listing the skills and qualifications required for the job.

When Jason Fried, CEO of 37signals, went on the hunt for an administrative assistant, he came up with a novel way of doing it. Instead of listing off several dozen lines of requirements, like words per minute and the usual expectations of an office job, he posted what the potential new hire would be doing in an average week.

A normal job post might list off nearly 30 lines of requirements and expectations. Fried's post for an administrative assistant listed off 26 lines, all tasks that would be accomplished in an average week.

So, instead of saying something like "must be a team player," you could try telling it how it is, and say "will have to make coffee every morning before the engineers arrive." It may sound funny, but the people who apply for the job will probably be more of a sure thing than they would have been otherwise, because they already know what they're getting themselves into.